"I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a LIVING SACRIFICE, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect." Romans 12:1-2

Thursday, December 12, 2013

(Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe; This homily was given 12 December, 2013 at the Chant Mass celebrated at St. Pius V Church in Providence, R.I.; See Luke 1:26-38)

There
is a spiritual principle we find all throughout the Old Testament, one that
continues also on into the New.In fact,
it is something we see all throughout the history of the Church and especially
in the lives of the saints. God often chooses—indeed, He greatly desires to
choose—weak persons, those who are truly insignificant in the eyes of the world,
and makes them powerful by His strength and capable instruments in His work of
redemption.

When,
in the Old Testament, God’s people are oppressed and His name is not honored;
when His people suffer violence and are threatened with destruction and ruin;
when things look bleak and the road ahead looks dark, God chooses a man.He chooses a man named David who is weak because
he is young and inexperienced; he is insignificant because he does not have
what it takes—in himself—to defeat the enemy.But God chooses this man and pours into his heart courage, vitality and
the strength necessary for him to defeat Goliath with nothing more than a rock.This will become paradigmatic for David who,
later as king, will come to discover that submitting himself humbly to the will
of God will allow the Lord to work powerfully and with great effect through him.

In
the New Testament, God will look over the world and see not one nation but
many, hungry and thirsty for the message of salvation; He will recognize not
one culture but a multitude of them, in need of forgiveness and redemption; He will
anticipate that not only those who speak the Hebrew language, but Greeks and
countless others will long to hear the proclamation of the Gospel in their
native tongue.It is then that he will
call for Himself a man, a weak man named Saul.

Saul
is a weak man for other reasons; he is weak because he is proud and
narrow-minded.He cannot see beyond the
confines of his own particular experience nor move beyond the borders of his
own limited perception.But God will
call this man, and pour out His grace, forgiveness and mercy into Saul’s heart
and then send him out to proclaim that saving message to all the world.He will send St. Paul out to one nation after
another; St. Paul will found church after church and write letter after letter,
renewing and evangelizing the world as he knew it.

But
when God wants to transform all civilizations of all times; when He wants to
break open hearts of stone and reorient the world to love and to life; when He
wants to turn all people everywhere, from all times and places, away from
selfishness and back to self-giving love, He doesn’t call a man at all.He calls a woman.

In
the Gospel of St. Luke this evening we hear how God called a woman, “betrothed
to a man named Joseph of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary”
(Luke 1:27).God called her who, in the eyes of the world
was so weak, so insignificant, and because she was docile and receptive to the
word of God He was able to usher in our redemption and bring His Son into the
world.

There
is a danger in this Gospel, of course, that this is all we will see.There is a temptation we face to see the
Blessed Virgin Mary—she who is without sin, perfect and inviolate—as a museum
piece, someone we can marvel at from afar but could never really warm up to or
draw very close to.That would be a tremendous
mistake, because God is doing so much more for us than we could have ever hoped for in
Mary.In the Virgin Mary God is
revealing to us the order of love and teaching us how we can receive His
love completely and then how to offer that love freely to those around us.

St.
John Paul II teaches us, in his Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women,” that there
is an “order of love.”It is not the
case that God pours love out into the world like water from a bucket.There is an order of love, and obviously that
order begins within God Himself.

From
all eternity the Father is pouring out His love to His Son.The Son graciously receives this gift,
embraces it, and offers that love willingly back to the Father.This glorious exchange of love is taking
place for all eternity.But the great
miracle of God is that He suddenly desires to share this love with you and with
me.He wants us to receive this great
outpouring of Divine charity.As St. Paul will
later articulate it:

God’s love has been poured into our hearts

through the Holy Spirit who has been given
to us.

—Romans
5:5

God
pours out His love into our hearts and allows us to share in that glorious
exchange that is within Himself, but when He does so He begins with a
woman.As we heard in our Gospel this
evening:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most
High will overshadow you.Therefore the
child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.

—Luke 1:35

Mary
is receptive to God and open to receiving what the Lord is asking of her
precisely because she is woman.St. John
Paul II describes beautifully what we see in Mary, and what is fundamentally
feminine in the order of love:

When
we say that the woman is the one who receives love in order to love in return,
this refers not only or above all to the specific spousal relationship of
marriage. It means something more universal, based on the very fact of her
being a woman within all the interpersonal relationships which, in the most
varied ways, shape society and structure the interaction between all persons-men
and women.

—Mulieris Dignitatem, #29

In
other words, women are receptive and capable of receiving this outpouring of
love from God and they, in turn, offer that love to the world around them,
teaching women and men how to receive the Holy Spirit and how to offer that
love back to God and to those around us.The Blessed Virgin Mary, St. John Paul II goes on to say, emphasizes
this reality “in the fullest and most direct way,” here at the Annunciation when
she hears the words: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you” (Luke 1:35).

The
great English writer Caryll Houselander describes with mystical beauty this
power of receptivity and docility we find in Mary.Writing on Mary’s consent, she asks the
question:

"What was she asked to consent?

First of all, to the descent of the Holy
Spirit, to surrender her littleness to the Infinite Love, and as a result to
become the Mother of Christ.

It was so tremendous, yet so passive.

She was not asked to do anything herself,
but to let something be done to her.”

—Caryll
Houselander, The Reed of God

Mary
did not see fit to take on a mission or place herself in the position of
effecting change in the world.Instead
she makes herself available to the living God by her receptivity to all that
God is asking.

Fiat voluntas tua, “Let it be done to me,”
she responds to the Angel Gabriel.This
is a passive form of the verb, not an active one.Let it be, let Your word accomplish what You
desire.I am Yours, Your own.Fiat.

This
is the love that God pours into our hearts, and this is the love that redeems
the world in which we live, even now.

Pope
Benedict XVI, in his Inaugural Homily back in April of 2005, as he received
what he would have clearly understood as the most powerful office in the
Church, said:

"It is not power, but love that redeems
us! This is God’s sign: he himself is love. How often we wish that God would
show himself stronger, that he would strike decisively, defeating evil and
creating a better world . . . We suffer on account of God’s patience. And yet,
we need his patience. God, who became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved
by the Crucified One, not by those who crucified him. The world is redeemed by
the patience of God. It is destroyed by the impatience of man."

How
often do we grow impatient of God and take things into our own hands?How often do we disregard the order of love
and define love by our own actions and not the initiative of God?This disregard for the love God desires
to accomplish in and through us is what destroys relationships, destroys
families, destroys so much of the good God wishes to accomplish in our world
each day.The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by the
impatience of man.

But
God, of course, is relentless in His mercy.He never tires of calling out to us, teaching us and leading us back
toward that order of love that we find so beautifully exemplified in the
Blessed Virgin Mary.Mary, for her part,
never ceases to offer that love to God’s people and to help them rediscover it
in their lives.

In
early December of 1531, she began to teach this on the hill called Tepeyac in
Mexico to a peasant farmer named Juan Diego.You may be well familiar with the story of how she called out to him,
appeared to her little “Juanito” and sent him to the local bishop, requesting
that a church be built in that very place.Of course, he did what she asked of him but failed utterly to convince
the bishop of anything.He was weak and
insignificant in the eyes of this world, and so he was hardly listened to when
he shared his story of the beautiful woman that had appeared to him.

Mary
was not disappointed.With great
patience and unwavering love she simply sent him back once again to request
that a church be constructed for her Son.Again Juan Diego failed.But he
was docile, he was receptive as he was being instructed by Our Lady, and when he
returned a third time with the sign of the roses, and the bishop saw the
miraculous image of the Blessed Virgin Mary embedded on St. Juan Diego’s tilma, construction began in earnest for
that church.It was accomplished not by
the strength, vision or determination of St. Juan Diego, but because he was
receptive to the word and message of God, a receptivity he learned from a young
Virgin Mother named Mary.

Within
seven years of the construction of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, eight
million native people were baptized there.After instruction on the Sacrament of Marriage—God’s plan of love for
one woman and one man, given to us in love for the building up of the human
family and society—it is said that 1,000 couples celebrated that sacrament in a
single day.Today over five million people
travel to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe each year to renew their faith
and respond to God’s call to holiness and eternal life.

Can
Mary still teach us what it means to receive the love of God and to offer it to
those around us?Can we still learn
what it means to rediscover the order of love in our lives and in our
communities?May we come to embrace that
same docility of St. Juan Diego, that same receptivity of the Blessed Virgin
Mary, and so allow the love of God to be poured out into our hearts and into
our world, a world in such desperate need of this order of love and of the God
who longs for nothing more than to give it away.

Sunday, December 01, 2013

(First Sunday of Advent-Year A; This homily was given 30 November, 2013 at St. Mary's Church, in Carolina, R.I.; See Romans 13:11-14 and Matthew 24:37-44)

One of the most remarkable and well-known conversions in the
history of the Christian faith is found in the story of St. Augustine.As a brilliant young man and accomplished
philosopher, Augustine’s intellect brought him farther along than most of the
men in his day, and his weakness for the sins of the flesh brought him further
from God than he could have possibly imagined.

In this regard, the sorrow and bitter tears of his mother,
St. Monica, are iconic.She spent entire
years of her life weeping for his conversion and crying out to God, and anyone
else who would listen, if only someone could convince her son how desperately
he needed God.Monica believed that her
son’s willful separation from God and his sinfulness, if unchecked and unchanged until death, would
result in the loss of eternal life (one of the great tragedies of our culture
is that there are no longer as many Monica’s who weep and lament the
possibility of such things, but that is another homily for another time).

Augustine himself would later concur with the conviction of
his mother when, in his autobiography, The Confessions, he expresses in
great detail the human drama of being utterly lost and the divine humility that
sought him out with breathtaking and undying love.

At one point in his own story of conversion Augustine
relates how, although he had come full circle on an intellectual level with
regard to the Christian faith and had begun to surrender his heart to God in
earnest, he found himself at an impasse when it came to leaving behind the
sensual pleasures that had so captivated him as a young man.Indeed, earlier he had openly admitted that
he was “a slave of lust” (The
Confessions, Book VI, 15.25).Late
now, but not too late, he became enamored of the desire to be set free.

Augustine relates how he was held back by vivid memories and
the weight of all that he was to leave behind.He could certainly imagine himself becoming fully immersed in God some
time in the future, but he lamented
the inability to do so presently.Overcome by emotion, he burst out of the house in which he was staying
and sat down in an adjoining garden.His
face wet with tears, Augustine began to pray to God, “Why not now?Why do I not put
an end to my shameful conduct from this hour forward?”(The
Confessions, Book VIII, 12.28).

At that very moment he began to hear the sound of a child’s
voice from a nearby house.The voice was
playfully singing, “Tolle, legge.Tolle, legge,” Latin for “Pick it up and read it.Pick it up and read it.”He paused and tried to think if he had ever
heard of a child’s game that used those words; if there was one, he could not
recall it.All the while that child’s
voice continued melodiously: Tolle,
legge.Tolle, legge.

It finally dawned on Augustine that, whatever game the child
next door was playing, God was speaking directly to him through that voice: You,
Augustine, pick it up and read it!Picking up the Sacred Scriptures that were beside him, he opened them at
random and came to the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the
Romans.It is the very same passage that
we have been given this weekend in our Second Reading for the First Sunday of
Advent.“Why not now?,” Augustine had asked.Suddenly St. Paul answers:

You know the time; it is the
hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when
we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand.

Let us then throw off the
works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves
properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and
lust, not in rivalry and jealousy.But
put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the
flesh.

—Romans 13:11-14

From this moment forward St. Augustine would have the
strength provided by God to embrace the call of God not only of chastity but
also of celibacy for the Kingdom of God.His mother, St. Monica, had prayed fervently that he would be baptized a
Christian and be able to embrace a life of chastity but she never imagined that
he would become a priest and finally a bishop.In a moment of grace St. Augustine had become awake and alive to all
that God was calling him to.

This Advent, are we?

“You know the time,” St. Paul urges us on.“It
is the hour now for you to awake
from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now
than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand” (Romans 13:11).

Advent is about waking up to the presence of God in our
lives and being alert to the power of God that transforms us and, through us,
transforms the world around us.Are we
awake and alert for that?

Jesus Christ, in our Gospel this weekend, warns us not to be
spiritually slothful, like the people in the days of Noah.They were totally occupied with marriage,
eating, drinking, celebrating—all good things, no doubt—but they let themselves
be distracted from the unum neccesarium,
the one necessary “thing”: God.

“Therefore, stay awake!Jesus warns us.“For
you do not know on which day your Lord will come” (Matthew 24:42).

When the Lord came to Bethlehem, and then to Galilee and
Jerusalem, so very many people missed Him.When he comes again, the Sacred Scriptures tell us, many will be
spiritually asleep.When he comes to us this Christmas, will we be
awake?

The Latin word for “coming” is Adventus.It is where we get the name for this season
of preparation for the coming of Christ in just a few short weeks.I would suggest this weekend three particular
tried-and-true ways that we can be more fully awake and alert for Jesus Christ
this Advent.They come to us from the
lives of the saints and have stirred the souls of Christians for centuries.They may already be a part of your daily
spiritual regimen, but we can always use a reminder.

Firstly, I would
suggest the Morning Offering.One of the best ways to be awake to God is by giving ourselves to
God the moment we wake.A well-known
Morning Offering used by many of the saints begins:

Lord Jesus Christ, I offer You all the prayers, works and sufferings of
this day for all the intentions of your most Sacred Heart.

It can be that simple,
but also that meaningful, for us and
for God.We are saying to God that all
the good we will accomplish—our prayers and works, our gifts and achievements,
our virtues and victories—are being offered to Him, in faith, in advance.

Also, we are saying that all the challenges and crosses we
will encounter—our sufferings, our setbacks, the contradictions that we may never
have anticipated—are all being offered to Him in faith, as well.“I am
awake for you today, Jesus.All day.”What a beautiful way to wake up to God each
day!

Secondly, I would
suggest that we take a page from St. Augustine’s book, literally!Tolle, legge!Take it up and read it! The prayerful
reading of Sacred Scripture has been the staple of the saints from the
inception of the Church until now.Perhaps we could begin with just a minute or two each day, taking up the
Bible and slowly letting it shape and form us, speaking to God whatever comes
to mind when we spend that time with Him in the Sacred Scriptures.One passage from the Letter to the Romans was
able to transform St. Augustine and make him fully awake and alive in
Christ.Imagine what God’s word will do
in our lives this Advent!

Finally, I would recommend the Daily Examen.Not only at
the beginning of the day but at the end of each day we follow the example of
the saints who come before God each evening and take two minutes to review the time
that has transpired since that Morning Offering.

For one minute, think of those several things for which you
are grateful, or of graces that you were most open to, or moments that God
touched your life in a significant way.It might be that friend you encountered at the market or the difficult
errand that was accomplished without a hitch; it might be your health or your
family or some other grace.

Next, we take a moment to think of those times in which we
were not as awake or alert to the presence of God as we could have been.We think of those sins that have perhaps set
us back or moments of weakness where we said or did something for which we are
sorry.We bring our repentant hearts
before God, seeking His mercy and forgiveness, which is so totally abundant and
resplendent whenever we turn to Him.

These methods and practices of our Christian lives sound so simple
and basic but they have the power to profoundly open our hearts to God, making
us alive, alert and awake in Jesus Christ.And that is the point of
Advent.Jesus Christ wants to wake us up and fill us with His life and
grace, so that we can then go out and
bring His presence to all those we encounter this week.

There are so many people—perhaps people we meet on a daily
basis—who may never walk into the Catholic Church this Advent.Perhaps they are afraid that they are not
truly loved by God or have done something in their lives that could never
warrant forgiveness; perhaps they do not believe that there is anything in the
Church for them or that their lives are sufficient without God or His Church;
perhaps they are so busy and occupied that they cannot imagine something so
remarkably awesome and super-substantial as the Eucharist being the greatest
experience of their earthly existence.

Whatever the case may be, you and I may be the most radiant
and real experience they will have of the presence of God this Advent.But that can only happen if we are fully
awake and alive in Christ.May this
Advent find us watchful and ready for the coming of Jesus Christ into our
lives, and then through us, into the lives of all we encounter this Advent
season.